A former Dewhirst seamstress has got her future all sewn up after being helped to find a new role to keep her machine running.

Maria Cave once worked at the former clothing firm which was a major employer in the region, supplying Marks and Spencer until the demise of the North East’s textile industry in the 1990s.

Now Mrs Cave is returning to the industry she loves, having spent years in a call centre, after recruitment firm KMS Partners found her the perfect fit at Ashbank Laundry in Teesside.

She said: “Sewing is what I love – I’ve had a machine since I was three-years-old so even on my first day at Ashbank I immediately felt like I was home again.

“KMS approached me with the opportunity after seeing the skills on my CV that I’d posted on a jobs website and they made the transition really easy – there’s been no stress at all and I still have regular contact with them to make sure I get all I need to work happily and effectively here at Ashbank.”

Ashbank Laundry provides a full laundry service, renting and laundering linen for everything from kitchens to bedrooms, with its client list including Durham University , Headlam Hall and Yorebridge House.

With the textile sector’s demise in the North East, the laundry firm had struggled to find someone with the experience and skills for their vacancy to repair linen and clothing.

Stephen Gosnay, general manager of the business, said: “We’d tried repeatedly to find someone suitable for the role, but fashion students just didn’t cut it because they didn’t have the experience of working in an industrial and fast-paced environment like Maria did for so many years.

“We had never used a recruitment firm before, but we soon realised that because sewing is a dying art we needed to get the experts involved.

“Without KMS I doubt we would have been able to fill the position, never mind so quickly, so it’s been fantastic for us to get Maria started so soon and we can continue to offer a full service to our clients.”

KMS head of client services Gemma Holmes said: “Ashbank is a fantastic business that has really aggressive growth plans, so finding the right person with the right skills quickly was really important so the company could continue to grow at pace.

Ashbank has seen continued growth since it was founded in 2012, after parting from laundry and detergent business Stanland Group.

The business has recently won 16 new contracts and doubled its turnover with the aim of becoming the region’s leading provider of laundry services.